Ought came together in Montréal as a band of expatriates initially attracted by sense-sharpening Canadian winters and university tuition that doesn't cost $40k a year. The city's cultural scene – especially its independent music ethos and galvanizing radical politics – was the underlying attractor, however, and one they jumped right into. Guitarist and vocalist Tim Beeler Darcy, originally a folk musician hailing from New Hampshire, fell in with New Jersey native Matt May (keyboards) and Australian émigré Tim Keen (drums, violin) – the three of them began sharing an apartment that doubled as practice space, where they were soon joined by Portland OR transplant Ben Stidworthy on bass. Ought played its first show and recorded its first EP in the apartment's largest bedroom, in the summer of 2012.

Ought is part of a vital and politically-engaged DIY arts community that has coalesced around one of the loft spaces at the northern limit of Montreal’s Mile End district in recent years (the same zone that incubated Constellation almost 20 years ago). The four band members are, unsurprisingly, participants in a half-dozen other music projects. Various members have also worked with Montreal’s fearless and beloved CKUT radio and the Howl! Arts Collective.

Additional Ought history comes by way of the band's own account:

It’s hard to talk about how the band came to be without talking about Loose-Fit, the Brasserie, and The Femmaggots. Loose-Fit was (and is) booking shows out of a local mainstay-type bar in Petit-Patrie called Brasserie Beaubien. This empowered a lot of people to be adventurous with new projects, and also it being always pay-what-you-can and chilled out and a publicly accessible venue (versus a loft-type situation where the address can’t be posted)—basically, it was (is) a Good Thing Going On. The Femmaggots were (are) our friends (and, some, housemates) at the time and besides being near and dear and fucking great people, they inspired a lot of others to start making music—many in this weird kind of punk-esque/political/wordy/funny world that we were also really into.

SO…the Femmaggots, plus the Brasserie made for a slowly expanding spiral of great music happening, plus actively bringing in lots of other groups that we didn’t know about + hooking up with great people coming through town. More Than Any Other Day definitely came out of this environment (and coming to terms with working varying degrees of bad jobs, etc), but also Quebec during the student strike, which was a total lid-off type situation that we were all really affected by. Meeting + playing with all these amazing people is really the story of the band, having never really gotten hype’d or even making physical releases and just really playing lots and being excited and thankful for the opportunity to keep playing and having a true fucking blast at shows, as they say.

Following another recording session in early 2013 and the release of a second EP via Bandcamp, Ought spent a few days at the Hotel2Tango studio with engineer Radwan Moumneh (Suuns, Matana Roberts, Jerusalem In My Heart) in fall 2013 at the invitation of Constellation, laying down a clutch of songs new and old that comprise the band's first "proper" full-length album. More Than Any Other Day was released by Constellation on April 29, 2014, to widespread critical acclaim.

Months of touring followed the album's release, and in late Spring the band returned to the studio to re-record some updated versions of a couple of other older tunes. The resulting 4-song EP, Once More With Feeling..., hit store shelves October 28 2014, as the band continued to tour extensively in North America and Europe throughout the Fall of 2014.

After carving out the first few months of the year for a well-deserved break from their relentless 2014 tour schedule, Ought will head back out for a handful of shows in Europe, in late May and into early June. See below for dates, and to re-visit "New Calm Pt. 2", from October's Once More With Feeling... EP.

Ought's Once More With Feeling... 10" EP is now a week away from its official release on October 28. Until then, the 4-song EP will be streaming in full via Pitchfork Advance. Head over there now to hear it:

We're also pleased to let another new video from the band out into the world, this one for Once More With Feeling...'s thrilling centerpiece track (and regular live set-closer) "New Calm Pt. 2". The video was directed by Montreal filmmakers Aaliyeh Afshar and Max Taeuschel, and also premiered this morning by Pitchfork. Watch it now:

With the release of their new EP Once More With Feeling... less than two weeks away and their latest round of North American touring drawing to a close, Ought have shared another video drawing on material from April's More Than Any Other Day. The video, directed by Lara Oundjian, captures a dance piece choreographed to "Pleasant Heart" by Kaitlyn Ramsden and performed by Kiera Hill. It was premiered on Monday by Impose Magazine. Head over there now to check it out, or see below for some thoughts on the piece shared by the choreographer and director:

Kaitlyn Ramsden, choreographer: "When starting the choreographic process, I was immediately attracted to the core melody that Ought repeats, deconstructs, shifts temporally and re-presents in Pleasant Heart. I wanted to interact with, even mimic, this melody, and bound the limits of the choreography within the structure of Ought's composition. I created a simple phrase of movement, consisting mostly of hand gestures, to mimic the melody. Throughout the piece the gestures are deconstructed, rearranged and repeated to resonate not just through the hands but throughout the whole body. In considering the way the dance would be realized on screen, I was interested in presenting each development of the gestural and musical phrases in a different physical space within one cohesive location."Lara Oundjian, director: "It is not unusual that a screen dance relies on gesture and the body to instigate camera movement, or to tie each shot to the next. Inspired by Kaitlyn’s desire to picture her gestural sequences in multiple spaces of one location, such was my basic approach. However, in devising the shots for this piece, I wanted Kiera’s body not to be strictly bound to, or scrutinized by, the camera. Instead, I was interested in depicting a body whose mobility moves the camera, and who traverses both physical and cinematic space. In other words, a body whose gestures have the power to travel through the boxing studio and push, pull or change the frame."The boxing studio offered aesthetic variety, and areas both intimate and vast. It is a happy accident that it is also a space coded with a regimented and aggressive strength, because it underlines, through contrast, the type of power I wanted to give to this dancing body. Kiera has no need to enter into those codes if she is charged with a different sort of gestural authority."More Than Any Other Day was released April 29, with the Once More With Feeling... EP about to drop October 28 - click here for preorder info. At present the band are wrapping up their North American tour and about to head back over to Europe for November. See below for the European dates.

Today we unveil our three new releases for Fall 2014, all hitting stores in September and October.First, we would like to extend a warm welcome to two new artists: Montreal kraut-funk quartet Avec le soleil sortant de sa bouche, and Ottawa-Hull-Montreal duo Last Ex. Their debut LPs release on September 30 and October 14, respectively. On 28 October a vinyl- and digital-only EP from Montreal's Ought releases a follow-up to their magnificent LP More Than Any Other Day (released in April). We've put together a 15-minute sampler/mixtape, drawing from each of these three records. Check that out here:

See below for more information about these artists and new records. All three are now available for pre-order in our webshop, with an added incentive for mailorder customers who might consider buying all three titles together; more info on that down at the bottom. As always, sincere thanks for listening.

We think it's safe to call Avec le soleil sortant de sa bouche a bit of a Montreal supergroup, its members having been active in this city's experimental rock communities for well over a decade, including participation in Panopticon Eyelids, Pas Chic Chic, Red Mass, Set Fire to Flames, and, from the Constellation roster, Fly Pan Am. Avec le soleil has solidified over the past year into a tight four-piece unit, and careened towards mastery of a highly original, deeply satisfying, giddy and heady avant-funk. The pair of exquisite and exhilarating 20-minute pieces featured on Zubberdust! is the culmination of the group's first two years of conceptual and somatic development. (The pieces are subdivided into sections for CD and digital track IDs.) This is (mostly) instrumental rock that exuberantly succeeds in blending a primitivist, hypnotic energy with cerebral pleasures, seeding an addictive trail of sonic brain-candy throughout the mixes. The band wholly embodies and channels its inimitable square grooves, while teasing out the innumerable joys of repetition via micro-deployments of ever-shifting electronic overlays – along with the occasional full-stop and 180 degree turn. JS Truchy's wordless lead vocals (and the choral arrangement on “Face à l'instant”) add compelling textural and melodic counterpoints while lending the music an especially timeless, deterritorialised and emotive dimension.For more info on Zubberdust, visit our release page. Our Fall 2014 sampler includes Avec le soleil's "Face à l'instant Part 2".

Out 14 October 2014:LAST EX - Last ExCST107 • CD / 180gLP / DL • PRE-ORDER NOWLast Ex is the new instrumental rock ensemble led by Simon Trottier and Olivier Fairfield, both longtime fixtures of experimental/punk scenes rooted in the cross-province hub of Hull/Ottawa (straddling the border of Quebec and Ontario, respectively). In addition to duties in various groups orbiting Fairfield's E-Tron Records (including H. de Heutz, Ferriswheel and many others), the two are perhaps best known as core members of haunted blues-folk ensemble Timber Timbre, which spawned the Last Ex project.When Timber Timbre’s ambient music for a horror film went unused back in 2012, Trottier and Fairfield began revisiting the sound palette they had built up for the soundtrack at Fairfield's studio in Hull, expanding on their techniques and textures, adding drums, bass and various other instruments. The duo found that they had dug into some very fertile territory, writing additional songs throughout 2013 and bringing their obsessions with sound collage, tape-based music concrète and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop to bear on the cinematic lyricism of the initial widescreen guitar- and string-based material. Derived from the title of the abandoned film, Simon and Olivier dubbed their new project Last Ex.With its combination of assured lyricism, cinematic guitars, dusky analog atmospherics and taut percussion, this is a vivid, concise and expressive instrumental album that sits snugly between fellow label acts Do Make Say Think and Exhaust on the one hand, Hrsta, Tindersticks and Evangelista on the other.The full run-down on Last Ex is available on our release page, and Last Ex's "Hotel Blues" is included on our Fall 2014 sampler.

Montreal four-piece post-punk group Ought has been gathering momentum the old-fashioned way, with a humble and deceptively unassuming debut album that's been worming its way into many many ears thanks to its combination of intelligence, authenticity, directness, simplicity and energy; and with live performances in which the band's channeling of genuine passion, politics and charisma are consistently connecting with and exuberantly galvanizing audiences.While they continue their relentless touring across North America and Europe this fall, we'll be letting out this vinyl- and digital-only EP which corrals a couple of selections from the band's older songbook, re-recorded this Spring at Hotel2Tango to reflect some of the ways they've grown and evolved over the past year or so. We think it's a very fine set of tunes that highlights and brings fans up to date with Ought's first two years of songwriting, revealing additional facets of the band, including its ability to play with nostalgia and balladry ("Pill"), feverish revival-tent testifying ("New Calm Pt. 2"), and improv/abstraction ("New Calm Pt. 3").For more info on the EP check our release page, and for a full listing of towns they'll be hitting this fall (there are many!) check our tours page. The EP includes "Waiting", which we let out early in the Spring as an MP3, and new track "Pill" is included on our Fall 2014 sampler.

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A SPECIAL OFFER FOR MAILORDER CUSTOMERS:Given the increasingly prohibitive cost of postage these days, particularly when shipping overseas from Canada, we thought it'd be a good time to throw in a few extras for our direct mailorder customers who decide to take the plunge and order all three of these new releases. So: for the rest of the year, if you buy all three of these new records on vinyl (that is, CST106LP, CST107LP and CST108EP), we've got a limited supply of Constellation tote bags and DVD copies of And We Made The Room Shine which we'll add to your package. Both were created in conjunction with our 15th anniversary European tour in 2012 – the 14" x 14" tote bags were hand-stitched and silkscreened by our friends at Belgrade's Dis-Patch collective (for sale during the tour), and the film was put together by the good people at Blogotheque during the shows in Vienna, and features special intimate performances from Elfin Saddle, Eric Chenaux, Hangedup, HRSTA, Matana Roberts and Do Make Say Think; it's seriously gorgeous work. To get your hands on these things just place an order for the three albums in our webshop as normal and write FALL 2014 in the comments section and we'll do the rest.

It's been a busy Spring for Ought, steadily gaining momentum since the release of More Than Any Other Day back in April and as yet showing no signs of slowing down.Their month-long North American tour alongside Dub Thompson kicks off in Phoenix, AZ next Sunday; followed by a week of shows with Freelove Fenner as part of Pop Montreal's Pop Off tour and a 10-day stint in Europe. A couple of weeks ago we announced another month of shows in Europe in late October and early November, starting off at Soy Festival in Nantes, France. And today we're filling in the gap: the will head out for another month in North America in late September into October, taking in Western Canada and the West Coast USA (among other places).We've got the full picture listed below, right underneath the video for "Today More Than Any Other Day" (which we'd recommend checking out if you haven't already).

Ought have launched a new video for the quasi-title track from More Than Any Other Day, their thrilling and critically-lauded debut LP we released in April. Filmmaker Adam Finchler's video collage gently describes beauty in the mundane and drama in the quotidian, while the band slide from tense introspection to fearless exuberance in one of their signature tunes. The video was premiered this morning by Pitchfork - head over there to watch it now:

More Than Any Other Day was released on April 29. The full run-down on the album, including ordering info and more audio samples, can be found here.

The band play Danbury, CT and Brooklyn's Rough Trade NYC tonight and tomorrow, before heading out for a month of shows in North America alongside Dub Thompson and a week in Europe in August. See below for the full schedule as it currently stands.

Ought's thrilling debut album, More Than Any Other Day, is now available in stores, and is being showered with rapturous critical praise. Designating the record Best New Music, Pitchfork describe "an album that treats panic attacks and adrenalized ecstasy as two sides of the same pounding heart, with its simultaneous transmissions of joy and fear, discipline and chaos, comedy and tragedy." The Grid TO called it a "smart, thrilling, noisy, and catchy collection of sparsely arranged guitar rock...that hits solidly on both visceral and intellectual levels," while Exclaim hailed it as "one of the most refreshing and inspiring rock records of the year... A fucking gem.”We're also excited to announce a pile of tour dates taking place over the summer. Following two shows in New York City – this weekend in Brooklyn, and again in June at Rough Trade – and another Montreal show at June's Suoni Per Il Popolo Festival, they'll head out for a month of shows in North America, co-headlining with California psych-rock outfit Dub Thompson. Not long afterwards, the band will then head to Europe in mid-August, where they'll spend a week hitting several festivals on the continent and in the UK. Phew.See below for the full listing of dates. For more info on the European dates check the Belmont Bookings, and check back here soon – there are many more tour dates on the way!

With a week to go until the release of Ought's glorious debut LP, More Than Any Other Day, the album is now streaming in its entirety via Pitchfork's Advance player, featuring a series of video collage clips assembled by the band from footage by NYC filmmaker Adam Finchler. Go there now:

In addition, late last week a video for "The Weather Song", was premiered by Line Of Best Fit in the UK. The video, also assembled by the band with some filming help from their friends, "puts the band in front of an array of wonderful things from waterfalls and seagulls, to The California Raisins and a large Canada Goose." Watch that below:

More Than Any Other Day is out April 29, and is available for pre-order now. We'll have tour dates to announce very soon; stay tuned!

Following its premiere a few weeks ago via The Needle Drop, Ought's "Habit" has been circulating widely online and receiving blushing praise from critics, including a Best New Track nod from Pitchfork. Here's a quick review:

PITCHFORK:BEST NEW TRACK: "The central sound of “Habit” is torn from a hybrid of angular punk and rock orthodoxy, drawing them into a lineage that includes artists such as Television and Elvis Costello. There’s plenty of promise here, especially when Beeler guides his band into the spaghetti-like morass of guitars and vocal shrieks at the song’s close. “There’s something you believe in,” he sings at the start, positively demanding people to believe along with him."

CONSEQUENCE OF SOUND:"Whereas previous single “The Weather Song” found lead singer Tim Beeler’s gruff yelps channeling Modest Mouse’s Isaac Brock, “Habit” recalls the jittery intensity of David Byrne and even a vexed Stephen Malkmus. Influenced by such heavyweights, Beeler’s mesmerizing performance effortlessly carries the song, while twinkling and jangly guitars slowly build and crescendo around him."

CHARTATTACK:"The fraught post-punk of the first section seems to be fermenting inside Tim Beeler's lungs, and in David Byrne's loud-man-in-a-small-room vocal style launches into a kind of self-invective: "Is there something that you're trying to express?" And like Talking Heads, here Ought have the ability to make their music sound in on the joke, its wandering guitar chords cascading through curious bass and half-remembered dream keyboards. The song's sonic narrative tightens the noose until the vessel bursts into a squall, a violin playing the ship down to Beeler's rapturous welcoming of an awful death: "I feel a habit forming."

Paste Magazine have run a 'Best Of What's Next' interview feature with Ought:

The opening track’s rhythms set this strangely groovy march—something anthemic, something one could almost dance to—while these rustled guitars clang out tight resonations spurring the vocalist’s very first lyric, presented as a forceful grunt, something like the clearing of the band’s collective throat.

With a month to go until the release of More Than Any Other Day, the debut LP from Ought, today The Needle Drop have premiered "Habit", another track from the album. It's a patient and deliberate slow-burner, molding the quiet desperation and searching ambiguity at its core into an increasingly urgent statement of purpose. Eventually it snaps and the song makes good on its promise to burst. It's sublime.

As The Needle Drop notes, "singer Tim Beeler’s voice doesn’t feel too different from that of a young David Byrne, and the guitars on this track sound like something out of a Midwestern emo release from the mid-90s. The instrumentation grows in intensity as the music progresses, and the band lifts these guitars and drums with some wonderful strings and electric piano."

More Than Any Other Day will be released on April 29. The full run-down, including pre-order info, can be found here.

Next up for 2014 is More Than Any Other Day, the debut full-length from Montreal post-punk quartet Ought, the newest addition to the Constellation roster. We excitedly welcomed the group to the fold a few weeks ago, and are thrilled to now formally unveil their forthcoming LP, hitting stores April 29. See below for info on the album and listen to "The Weather Song," or click here for the full run-down (including pre-order links).

Ought has been burning with a strong and steady flame since flickering to life in Montreal in 2011. Holed up in a shared apartment that doubled as their rehearsal space, the four band members self-recorded a first EP and played their first show in these domestic confines, then busted out into the city's loft circuit, and into the city streets during the Printemps d'Erable Quebec student general strike, in 2012. These inspired months of mass mobilization against neo-liberal austerity measures galvanized a wide and inspiring range of agit-prop expression in Montreal, and indelibly shaped the emerging sound, vision and social mandate of Ought. Guitarist/vocalist Tim Beeler, who previously had been writing poetry and folk music, drew new energy from electrification/amplification and from solidarity/protest alike; his declarative, observational vocal style ranges from wide-eyed to worried, but never submits to cool irony or emotional detachment.Ought's earnest, stately and exuberant post-punk is dextrous, deliberate, unfussy and fluid, with debts to Cap’n Jazz, The Feelies, Lungfish, Gang Of Four and early Talking Heads, among many others. The band shifts from sharp angles and stuttering counterpoint to softer edges and chiming flow, with an economy of elements and fidelity to their basic 4-piece constitution. The instrumental interplay is consistently whipsmart, supple and deceptively simple. Beeler's speak-singing can give way to melancholic melodic croons and ragged, desperate yelps, always driven by sincerity of feeling and connection to his subject matter, whether that's the conundrum of our fractured interiority, or communion with others in our fractured social space – or, for the most part, both.Ought are a righteous and humble young band, fiercely dedicated to grassroots organizing and artmaking, taking as self-evident the inseparability of politics and aesthetics; we are proud and excited to be releasing their debut full-length.More Than Any Other Day is the result of a week of recording and mixing at Montreal's Hotel2Tango with engineer Radwan Moumneh (Suuns, Matana Roberts, Jerusalem In My Heart) in November 2013; the album replaces the band's previously self-released 5-song Bandcamp EP of the same name, comprised of a separate set of recordings.Thanks for listening.